Police: Raging men didn't let the presence of a cop in a cruiser stop them from shooting, stabbing, smashing at Allston bar

UPDATE: Licensing Board found Patron's committed no violation.

A group of men apparently angry another guy talked to one of the women with them at Patron's early on Nov. 26 called in reinforcements to launch a series of assaults that left one man shot, another stabbed and a third smashed in the head with a champagne bottle, a police detective said at a Boston Licensing Board hearing today.

The board decides Thursday whether Patron's, 138 Brighton Ave., could have done anything to prevent the Nov. 26 melee, which also left a bar bouncer with a gash over one eye.

In accounts by a D-14 detective and Patron's owner Marc Berkowitz today, the board heard that when one man "talked to a girl he shouldn't have been talking to," her male companions decided the only appropriate response was a violent beatdown, so they made calls to bring some reinforcements, who stationed themselves right outside the place's front and rear entrances - despite the presence of a Boston cop sitting in a cruiser with its blue lights going in an attempt to minimize closing-time issues at the sometimes troublesome intersection of Brighton and Harvard avenues.

As the night was winding down for the roughly 250 people in Patron's at closing time, somebody opened fire, hitting one man in the upper thigh. Another man was jumped in the parking lot by several guys, who stabbed him repeatedly. Upstairs, a third man was hit in the head with a champagne bottle. The man who was stabbed didn't wait around for an ambulance and somehow got to Beth Israel Hospital - where he was immediately rushed into surgery to deal with his critical injuries.

When police got upstairs, they found chairs and tables strewn about, smashed bottles and glasses everywhere, which seemd to look like a large fight had taken place. Berkowitz, however, said there was no fight, just remnants of panic: "A woman screamed there was a gunshot, and then there was chaos," as people ran for the exits, he said.

The detective told the board two suspects in the shooting were quickly stopped in a car. Officers didn't find a gun in the car, but that's because one of the two had first taken care to throw the gun up on the roof of Blanchards on Harvard Avenue, he said. They were arrested; the gun recovered from the roof, he said.

The men suspected for the other attacks remain at large. Although Patron's has an ID scanner that records the data from IDs, police say several of the troublemakers defeated it by somehow getting their IDs outside, where their associates then used them to gain entry. "They were not quite paying attention to what they were doing, some licenses were being passed around," the detective said.

Berkowitz said when he learned about that lax behavior at the door, he immediately fired the person in charge of security that night. He added he is no longer letting the promoter who organize that night's entertainment use his space.

The men responsible for the stabbing, the bottle smashing and the forehead opening remain at large.

The detective said Berkowitz and his staff were very cooperative with police investigators.